The present disclosure relates generally to health and nutrition. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to methods for classifying food products and predicting appropriate ages and/or developmental stages that children should be provided with the food products.
It is known in the art that children of different ages and developmental stages present different levels of developmental skills including, for example, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, oral motor skills, and cognitive development. Indeed, from birth age to preschooler age, children develop at a rapid rate and are constantly fine tuning developmental skills as they age. Because an infant and a preschool-aged child have widely differing developmental skills, it is important for parents and caregivers to provide children with foods that are appropriate for the child's age and/or developmental stage. For example, an infant should not be provided with a hand-held biscuit for self-feeding because the infant has not yet refined her gross motor development to self-feed, nor would the infant be able to properly chew the biscuit in her mouth in order to swallow the biscuit. Alternatively, while a preschooler-aged child may be able to properly eat a hand-held biscuit, it is not likely that the biscuit is appropriate for the developmental stage of the older child.
It is not always easy, however, for parents and caregivers to determine appropriate foods for children. This is due, in part, to the fact that most parents simply are not experts in characterizing certain attributes of children's foods, or in immediately recognizing the child's appropriate developmental stage. As such, there exists a need to provide a comprehensive process for characterizing food products according to an appropriate age and/or developmental stage for a child to consume the food products. There also exists a need for an objective process for predicting an appropriate age and/or developmental stage at which a child can consume a food product.